Mix Some Fresh Green Herbs, Resident Evil: Outbreak Is Back Online

If you’ve ever bleached your hair blond to mimic the looks of antagonist Albert Wesker, then you’re probably aware of Resident Evil: Outbreak. Released over ten years ago, the PlayStation 2 survival horror employed the console’s network adaptor to create the first online experience in the series’ storied history. Naturally, the official servers have since been shut down – but a bunch of fans have managed to reanimate them recently.

Supporting both the original outing and its expansion, brainy brand aficionados were able to reverse engineer the server with packet captures from the Japanese versions of the game, allowing it to bring the classic back online. The group’s working to enable support for the North American and PAL iterations of the title, but it doesn’t yet have a timeframe for that. As such, you’ll need a console capable of playing Eastern software to get in on the action.

While it never attained the mainstream recognition of the numbered Resident Evil releases, Outbreak certainly had a vocal fanbase, which has been quietly clamouring for a follow-up over the past few years. It looks like this is the best that they’re going to get for now. Let’s just hope that Capcom doesn’t send any S.T.A.R.S. agents to shut the whole operation down.

I was too young to be bothered about playing online games back when this was released.... A missed opportunity! I would love to try this game online Nothing beats classic Resident Evil, how I hate what the franchise has become ! This last generation (PS3/360) really killed the survival horror genre (including Silent Hill) and I will never forget the dissapointment of Forbidden Siren on PS3, I mean the game was good-ish but nothing compared to 1 & 2.
Thankfully, looking at some future releases (or rather PC Ports) the Survival Horror genre is making a comeback!